Bowlby's Theory, Introduction

• ATTACHMENT: An emotional tie between two people, usually a mother and a child. The relationship is reciprocal (shared).
• SOME CHARACTERISTICS:

  • Seeking proximity
  • Distress on separation
  • Joy on reunion
  • Person used as safe base to explore world
• Bowlby's theory:

  Adaptive

  Social releasers

  Critical period

  Monotropy

  Internal working model
• ADAPTIVE

  • Forming an attachment helps to ensure the survival of a child
  • Attachment gives our species an ‘adaptive advantage’, making us more likely to survive
  • This is because if an infant has an attachment to a caregiver, they are kept safe, given food and kept warm.
• SOCIAL RELEASERS

  • Babies have social releasers which ‘unlock’ an innate tendency in adults (in particular mothers) to care for them
  • These social releasers are both: ‘physical’ - the typical baby features and body proportions; behavioural - crying, cooing, smiling
• CRITICAL PERIOD

  • Babies have to form an attachment with their caregiver during a critical period
  • This is between 3 months and 2 and a half years old. Bowlby said that if a child doesn’t form an attachment during this time, then the child would be damaged socially, emotionally, intellectually and physically.
• MONOTROPY

  • Bowlby believed that infants form one very special attachment with their mother. This special, intense attachment is known as monotropy. If the mother isn’t available, the infant could bond with another ever-present adult mother-substitute
• INTERNAL WORKING MODEL

  • Through the monotropic attachment, the infant would form an Internal working model
  • This is a special model for relationships. All the child’s future adult relationships will be based on their early attachment relationship
• The internal working model is important for a number of reasons, including:

  • In the short term, it gives the child insight into the caregiver’s behaviour and allows them to influence it in a way that is beneficial to them and form a true partnership
  • It acts as a template for all future relationships
• The continuity hypothesis states that individuals who are strongly attached during infancy will continue to be socially and emotionally competent into adulthood whereas those who do not will experience social and emotional difficulties.
• • Lorenz (1935) divided a group of goose eggs into two groups - one was left with their natural mother, the other group was placed in an incubator
  • Lorenz made sure that when the eggs in the incubator hatched, he was the first moving object the goslings saw. After this, he marked the two groups and returned them to their natural mother
• • The geese that had hatched in the incubator continued to follow him, while those who had hatched naturally continued to follow their mother
  • Lorenz concluded that goslings are programmed to imprint onto the first moving object they see, highlighting the rapid formation of attachment in animals
• • Lorenz supports the idea of the critical period
  • ‘The process is confined to a very definite period… which in many cases is of extremely short duration the period during which the young partridge gets its reactions of following the parent birds conditioned to their object, lasts literally but a few hours, beginning when the chick is drying off and ending before it is able to stand’
• • Hazan and Shaver (1987) used a questionnaire called ‘The Love Quiz’ to examine current attachment experiences and attachment history. 
  • 620 people responded to the questionnaire which was published in the Rocky Mountain News. There were 205 men and 415 women. This means there is a gender bias
  • Opportunity sampling
  • They found a positive correlation between attachment type and later love experiences.
• • Conclusion: the results support Bowlby’s idea of an internal working model and suggest that our early childhood experiences affect our later adult relationships
  • People with insecure attachment are more vulnerable to loneliness
  • This supports the idea of the internal working model, as the monotropic relationship defines future relationships
  • However, the wording of the questionnaire is subjective: ‘self sufficient’, ‘caring’
• • In 1966, the Romanian government tried to boost the population by encouraging parents to have large families and banning abortion
  • The consequence was that many babies could not be cared for and ended up in institutional care.
• • When the Western world became aware of this practice in 1989, there were over 100,000 in 600 orphanages. 
  • The children spent practically all day in their cribs with little cognitive or emotional stimulation. Many of these children were adopted by western families where they were studied by psychologists to investigate the effect this institutionalisation had on their development
• Rutter - 1998

  • Longitudinal study - 165 Romanian children, adopted by UK families. Divided into 3 groups based on age at adoption (before 6 months, between 6 months and 2 years, after 2 years)
  • Control group: 52 British children adopted around the same time but not from institutions
  • Regular assessment of physical, cognitive and emotional development
• • At age 6, children adopted before 6 months generally caught up with their British counterparts in terms of development.
  • Children adopted after 6 months showed significant deficits in attachment, emotional and cognitive development, with some displaying signs of disinhibited attachment (over friendliness with strangers)
• According to Bowlby’s original theory it should be impossible to form an attachment after the critical period. However, Rutter et al (1998) shows that whilst attachment is significantly stunted, it can still occur outside of this critical period. As such, psychologists now use the term sensitive period to suggest that there is a window of optimal development but it can still occur outside of this window, in a more limited way
• According to Bowlby, attachments develop from 3 months, but surely if it’s important for survival, it should develop before this
• Kagan (1984) provides an alternative explanation, they suggest a child’s innate temperament are the main influence of attachment behaviours i.e. those with an ‘easy’ temperament form closer attachments as it’s easier to interact with them and visa versa